A Final Thought From McCarran International Airport

LAS VEGAS - One promising HDTV technology on display at last year's CES has vanished from sight this year. Neither Canon nor Toshiba were showing off any of the screens based on SED (surface-conduction electron-emitter display) technology that they had displayed last year. A January ago, this system had been praised for combining the deep blacks and fast response times of plasma and the brightness of LCD. Where'd it go? The best guess: The tumble in flat-panel prices will make the first, inevitably expensive round of SED screens look pricey in comparison, so somebody needs to hack away at those costs

Another TV-tech contender - one so far confined to the tiny screens of cell phones and other portable devices - may be getting closer to commercial reality. Sony demonstrated some beautiful prototype OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens, in 11- and 27-inch sizes. Their depth of color was unmistakable - Sony touted a million-to-one contrast ratio - but the amazing thing here was the extreme thinness of these sets. I took a ruler to the side of one of the 11-inch models: it was 1/8th of an inch thick. You could tape this screen to the inside of a cabinet door.